Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/461

 434 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. of Anoja Messaretica, in the ancient territory of Gortyna (Fig. 164).^ The chamber, which is oven-shaped, was originally four metres fifty centimetres in height (Fig. 165), and is approached by a low passage four or five metres in length, in which you have to crawl on all fours. The grave contained four small terra-cotta sarcophagi, in which, presumably, children had been laid, for the biggest are below one metre in length. The first notion which comes to the mind in presence of these recipients, is that the bodies they contain were cremated ; but the holes at the bottom of the vat could only have been designed to drain off viscuous Fig. 164. — Plan of the Massara tomb. and liquid matter arising from bodies in process of decomposition. The question whether inhumation or cremation was practised here must remain unanswered, for no satisfactory conclusion can be reached from the information gleaned from the farmer, to the effect that the bones were found almost reduced to powder. The chamber, with its entrance passage and rock-excavated dome covered with earth, reproduces the arrangement of the bee-hive tombs of the lower city at Mycenae, where they are but reduced copies of the royal sepulchres. Here the parent-shape ^ Paolo Orsi, Urne funehri cretesi dipinte nello stile di Micene (Estratto dai Monumeftti antichi pubblicati per cura della R. Accademia dei Lincei).